SirKnight wrote on Feb 26, 2013, 10:27:That may be, but I figure the president of Edios would probably know quite a bit about what MS is doing with the 720. It would be different if one of those speculating analysts said this. They are not in a position to truly know jack, they just make shit up.

His jobtitle is "Life President" or some such bullshit. He is the guy that drunkenly not only oops-revealed the last Hitman about a year before Sqeenix wanted to, but then also continued to talk about K&L2 running on IO's next-gen engine.

If you check the actual wording from the interview, it doesn't really seem like he knows anything. He isn't even sure the new machines will have optical drives.

I don't console, but those around me that do, pretty much are unanimous the other way. Live was the must have feature. Or what I like to call AOL 2.0, once they figure that out, they'll run fast from it.

That's what many of us thought at the time but according to Bashiok and other folks at Blizzard the AH had nothing to do with it. They designed the game's social functions and things like the AI around online and blah blah can't remove it blah blah. They even went as far as saying they couldn't have the game without it, nope sorry no patch is possible. Too bad it was a huge load of shit.

Of course. All of Blizzards reasons about why the game requires a persistent internet connection turned out to be complete hogwash, "The game was designed to be played online only, we can't just make an offline patch". Whoops. Who could've imagined? Wait, most of those "negative" users who correctly called this out. It was an obvious farce to all but the most brand blinded zealot long ago.

It's a smart business move for Blizzard, hedge your bets in case there has been actual brand damage done in the PC market. It's a real middle finger to their fans though, development of the PC version will now be slowed by console certification and release problems.

As part of its PlayStation 4 unveiling last week, Sony confirmed that its next-gen console wasn't going to block pre-owned software. Microsoft, on the other hand, has "gone halfway” between physical and digital distribution with the new Xbox, blocking pre-owned in the process according to Livingstone.

“With the next Xbox, you supposedly have to have an Internet connection, and the discs are watermarked, whereby once played on one console it won’t play on another," said Livingstone.

jdreyer wrote on Feb 26, 2013, 15:10:Whereas hackers would have an easy time exploiting the code on a PC to produce gold and items, ruining the RMAH, I imagine they're more comfortable with the code residing on a console where it's much less accessible. Not defending their actions here, I'm as pissed as anyone that D3 is always online, but trying to guess at their rationale.

A friend of mine who was working on that quickly C&D'd server emulator said it's really more down to their actual netcode which has shown to be quite robust. They had managed to get some of the AI stuff functioning when Blizzard legal swooped in.

deqer wrote on Feb 26, 2013, 14:37:Remember all that fluff Blizzard was feeding you about "the game was built ground up that way, so, it's too difficult to change that."

It was all bullshit, and here's the proof. They basically switch it ON or OFF, because that's how smart programmers program stuff, and therefore you have a copy of the engine with Always On = OFF, for PlayStation.

Lol. what does that tell you? All these lies, and deceit. What does that tell you? ...

As I understand it, none of the AI or loot algorithms are in the PC version. People trying to hack D3 have monsters just standing around doing nothing. So, they actually designed it to feed the code to the player from the central server regarding these things. So, that would explain why it took them an entire year to integrate that code into the client version for console.

Whereas hackers would have an easy time exploiting the code on a PC to produce gold and items, ruining the RMAH, I imagine they're more comfortable with the code residing on a console where it's much less accessible. Not defending their actions here, I'm as pissed as anyone that D3 is always online, but trying to guess at their rationale.

avianflu wrote on Feb 26, 2013, 14:41:I suspect Blizzard sat around a table and realized that a real-time auction house using real money and mandatory on-line in the console version would go as poorly as it did on PC. So they changed the game in the console version.

The only good news about the Diablo 3 fiasco is that other game devs will now think twice about creating more games with those "features."

Those other devs are pretty much beholden to publishers, and all those publishers see is that 10 million ... people bought Diablo 3.

I suspect Blizzard sat around a table and realized that a real-time auction house using real money and mandatory on-line in the console version would go as poorly as it did on PC. So they changed the game in the console version.

The only good news about the Diablo 3 fiasco is that other game devs will now think twice about creating more games with those "features."

Remember all that fluff Blizzard was feeding you about "the game was built ground up that way, so, it's too difficult to change that."

It was all bullshit, and here's the proof. They basically switch it ON or OFF, because that's how smart programmers program stuff, and therefore you have a copy of the engine with Always On = OFF, for PlayStation.

Lol. what does that tell you? All these lies, and deceit. What does that tell you? ...

That explains why it took a year to come out. They couldn't get it to work always on (or were forced by the console makers to have it be standalone), so they migrated the AI to the client. Just patch the PC version, and all will be forgiven.

Dagnamit wrote on Feb 26, 2013, 10:10:If Sony says they won't, then Microsoft can't block used games. It would be an insta-loss, Sony wins, the end. I wouldn't worry about it.

Sony hasn't said they won't either. That answer they gave a few days ago was evasive as hell. They may not, but it doesn't mean they won't allow the publishers to do it. And it doesn't mean they won't watermark games in some manner either.

If MS is dumb enough to do this than it's over before it began. And it probably is for a lot of people anyway given the online and Kinect being required. I know that alone would prohibit a purchase from me automatically.

I'm sure it will be a joint decsions. MS and Sony will collude on this, b/c there aren't any other players in the console market. It's a duopoly essentially, and that's why you get this kind of anticompetitive practice.

That explains why it took a year to come out. They couldn't get it to work always on (or were forced by the console makers to have it be standalone), so they migrated the AI to the client. Just patch the PC version, and all will be forgiven.